ASU swim cruises past BYU in men’s, women’s races

Sophomore Lori Layne Kremer strides through the water during ASU’s home swim meet vs. BYU on Jan. 12. (Photo by Sam Rosenbaum)

“Beat Brigham Young handily” must have been on the ASU swim and dive team’s New Year’s resolution list coming into 2013.

On both the women’s and the men’s side, the Sun Devils dominated from the first race and never looked back with the women taking their matchup 201-94 and the men winning theirs 158-138.

Swim coach Dorsey Tierney-Walker was genuinely elated for both her men and women.

“I’m real happy to see us coming off our break and really perform, on the men’s side our best dual-meet so far,” Tierney-Walker said. “We raced competitive from top to bottom, which I haven’t really seen throughout the year.”

Aside from junior Alex Coci, whom Tierney-Walker said always performs well for the Sun Devils, ASU saw plenty of men perform well today in a complete team effort, in particular junior Herbie Behm.

“Herbie Behm had by far his best dual-meet of the season, I think his technique has improved quite a bit,” Tierney-Walker said.

The women set the tone right away with the first race of the day when the team of senior Taylor Wohrley, junior Alex Popa, and seniors Caroline Kuczynski and Shannon Landgrebe finished first (1:43.12) in the 200 Medley Relay.

Following that up, the men got their first win of the day in the 200 Medley Relay (1:31.63) behind the foursome of Coci, junior David Adalsteinsson, senior Deniz Hekmati and junior Herbie Behm.

ASU’s women continued to swim with the same dominance as they have all year, having a first-place finisher in all 14 swimming events on Friday.

Tierney-Walker said she’s never comfortable with where her team is at, but is happy to see how the training has been working for bigger events.

“This was a good opportunity for us to see where we are right now, the big test will be in two weeks when we have Cal and Stanford,” Tierney-Walker said.

Divers Keep Rolling

It was more of the same for the Sun Devil diving unit on Friday.

Coach Mark Bradshaw said with all things considered like the cold temperature and how windy it was, he thought his divers performed efficiently.

Senior Harrison Jones was the only male diver for ASU, but he held his own yet again. Jones placed first in both the 1-meter (370.73) and the 3-meter (382.50).

“(Harrison’s) just got a switch that he can turn on and he’s just so consistent with his diving,” Bradshaw said. “No matter what situation you put in front of him he still manages to do good dives.”

On the women’s side, freshman Morgan Weller took first place in both the 1-meter (295.88) and 3-meter (312.98) dives, while junior Hailey Casper placed second in both events with scores of 276.38 and 276.15.

“Meets on a day like today are more about sucking it up, character building and toughing it out,” Bradshaw said. “To get a good performance on a day like today is just not going to happen. If you can do well in these conditions, when you get to the conference championships and zones, it makes it easier.”

In two weeks, ASU will take on both Stanford and California in Tempe in what are certainly difficult tough meets against some of the top competition in the country.